Aurora University
ACI Member Partnership Case Studies: Aurora University
By Daniel Hipp and Sherry Eagle
Author Biographies:
Daniel Hipp, PhD, is Associate Professor of English and Chair of the English Department at Aurora University.
Sherry Eagle, PhD, is Executive Director of the Institute for Collaboration at Aurora University.
Abstract:
This article details the teacher education programs created through a partnership between the Aurora University Department of Education and the Aurora Public School system, as funded by ACI’s Success in High-Need Schools TQE-P grant funding. The programs include a New Teacher Academy, a Secondary Education Curriculum Review Project, tutoring and after school programs and programming directed to teaching gifted students.
Introduction
Aurora University (AU) traces its origins to the 1893 founding of a seminary in the small town of Mendota, IL. In the more than 100 years since that beginning, the former Aurora College has grown to see an expansion of curricular offerings in a number of professional fields, beyond the traditional liberal arts programs, and began to award advanced degrees in selected disciplines. These changes culminated in the 1985 decision to rechristen the institution Aurora University. AU is composed of two main campuses, one in Aurora, IL and one in Williams Bay, WI, which serve different populations but collaboratively strive to achieve the university’s mission to be “an inclusive community dedicated to the transformative power of learning.” Aurora University enrolls more than 4,000 students in its undergraduate and graduate programs on these two campuses.
The College of Education offers a variety of professional preparation programs for both future and current educators. At the undergraduate level, best teaching practices are learned in small interactive classes and find immediate application in our partner schools. Programs are offered in secondary education content areas (mathematics, biology, English language arts, and social studies), elementary education, special education and physical education. At the graduate level, programs are available for current teachers in educational leadership, curriculum and instruction, reading instruction, and special education. Career changers are also served through a broad range of certification programs. The doctoral program is the capstone of College of Education offerings. Twenty-four full-time teaching faculty members and nine administrative faculty comprise the College of Education faculty.
AU partners with the two public school districts that serve most of Aurora’s residents: West Aurora District 129, serving the west side of the city and East Aurora District 131, serving the east side. The former has a growing and diverse student population: 41% Hispanic, 38% non-Hispanic Caucasian, 18% African-American, and 2% Asian, with 39% of its students qualifying as low income. Fewer than 60% of its African-American and disabled students meet or exceed the Illinois Learning Standards’ targets set by the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) in mathematics. The latter’s most recent Illinois School Report Card reported a total enrollment of 12,496, of whom 82% are Hispanic, 9% African-American, and 6% Caucasian, and 68% of its students living in low-income families. According to East Aurora Superintendent Jerome Roberts, “most of our district’s funding is devoted to students who have been identified as ‘at risk’ and therefore, we have limited funding for programs for students who are meeting state expectations.”
Project Overview
During years one and two of the grant, AU focused its efforts on partnership cultivation. We established two working groups—one internal to the university, composed of faculty and administrators from the College of Education and the College of Arts and Sciences; the other expanded this group to include instructors and administrative staff from the two partner districts. Regular meetings of these two bodies resulted in a process by which grant funds supported established programs in both districts aimed at the mentoring and retention of new teachers, such as pre-school year workshops, professional development sessions, and experienced and novice teacher mentorship pairings. Admittedly, during the earliest phases of our project grant dollars bolstered established structures supporting teachers within our high-need partner districts, but we felt this would foster fuller and more fruitful collaboration during the three remaining years.
Our focus upon issues confronting new teachers and those about to enter the profession was guided by our experiences as educators. Having worked with these populations in the college classroom and observing them in field experiences as students near graduation, we sensed that these years marking the transition from student to professional are ones when soon-to-be and new teachers are most vulnerable and in need of support. Recent research that is beginning to emerge about teacher-induction confirms this sentiment. The New Teacher Center (2008) offers a cost-benefit analysis to argue for the economic reasons for creating highly structured mentoring and support programs for new teachers in the public schools. Likewise, Thompson, Pack, Goe, and Ponte (2005) present data that show the impact that the development of such programming can have not just in economic terms of saving districts the cost of replacing teachers who are not retained, but also in student achievement. The National Academy of Sciences (2007) argues for the need for greater content expertise in new teachers, particularly in mathematics and science, emphasizing that teacher training and support programs are effective not only in allowing new teachers to take on the challenges of a new profession, but also in enabling them quickly to develop practices to teach effectively the content that twenty-first century students need to compete in the global marketplace.
Our assessment of grant achievements at the mid-point of year two included gathering feedback on issues confronting new teachers and candidates in training that would be most helpful from the school districts’ points of view. They reported that new teachers most needed professional development in classroom management, interacting with parents, and working with ELL students and students with special needs. As a result, by the conclusion of year two the partners established AU’s New Teacher Academy. In fall 2006, the New Teacher Academy invited teacher candidates enrolled in AU programs along with novice and experienced teachers from our two partner districts to four sessions: “How Diversity Shapes Today’s Classroom,” “How NCLB Impacts Today’s Classroom,” “Classroom Management,” and “Getting Ready for Parent/Teacher Conferences.” A total of 140 candidates, novice teachers, and veteran teachers attended these sessions led by collaborative teams of school district teachers and university faculty.
Based on the success of these programs, as reflected in survey data and focus group studies afterwards, the grant leadership team decided to offer a second set of workshops during fall 2007. Consultations with the partner districts identified session topics felt to be most useful to new teachers and those preparing to enter the profession: “The First Days of School,” “Getting Ready for Parent/Teacher Conferences,” “Professional Support and Professional Development,” and “Classroom Management: What to Do When Things Get Out of Control.” The success of this second year of the academy was reflected in assessment data and by the faculty in both Arts and Sciences and Education as the speaker and workshop model was adopted by the faculty who coordinate our course, Student Teaching Seminar (EDU 4750). All elementary and secondary education majors take this course to complement their student teaching internship. Continued consultation with the partner districts in identifying topics and selecting experienced teachers to speak on these topics to our student teachers has also affirmed the Academy’s effectiveness.
We regard the New Teacher Academy as one of the greatest achievements of our project because it led to a lasting change to the “infrastructure” of our curriculum. Using the academy model and grant resources we offered bimonthly seminars on student-leadership skills and development. These sessions led by individuals such as the mayor of Aurora and the president of Aurora University evolved into a program that also attracted a three-year grant from 3M focused on student leadership. This program, entitled LEAD (Leadership Education and Development), now awards a certificate to students who serve in leadership positions on campus and in the community.
Meanwhile, the steering committee developed other initiatives, some that continued throughout all five years of the project. The Math Coaching Program, established at both high schools (West Aurora HS in 129 and East Aurora HS in 131), linked experienced instructors in both high schools with a cadre of novice teachers to promote best practices in math instruction. These coaches consulted regularly with a faculty member in the math program at AU about teaching strategies and content standards for teacher candidates while AU underwent its own self-study in preparation for our NCATE accreditation. AU also launched and sustained an E-mentoring Program for new teachers, providing online support for instructors on issues typically confronting those new to the profession and to high-need environments. Additionally, project dollars were invested in AU’s Future Educators Association through the sponsorship of noteworthy speakers such Dr. Harry Wong.
As year three of the project commenced, the steering committee developed an initiative focused squarely on improving our secondary education by emphasizing preparation for teaching in high-need schools environments. Our Secondary Education Curriculum Review Project established four working groups in each of the four secondary education certification programs (math, biology, social studies, and English language arts) composed of arts and science discipline faculty, counterpart faculty from the College of Education, and practitioners from the partner districts who teach in the content areas. In this project, alignment with the grant goals of improving mastery of standards in content areas was more directly addressed than in any of AU’s project initiatives. Syllabi for key content courses were reviewed and the practitioners offered recommendations about content matters likely to be contained within the school district curricula.
One key recommendation in this initiative was to augment the opportunities of our teacher candidates to participate in field experiences in our partner districts, particularly early in their work towards certification. AU’s City-Wide After School Program had already functioned as a vehicle to place all participating AU students in area elementary and middle schools, but legislation passed through the Illinois Assembly in May 2007, opened a path for AU to launch its Supplemental Educational Services Tutoring Program (SES) that would grant clinical credit to students who would also be paid for their work. AU juniors and seniors who were accepted into the program received training and subsequently tutored middle school students on site in school district 131 in both mathematics and science. By 2008, this program served more than 100 students in three partner middle schools and met the contact hour requirements to qualify as an SES provider under the provisions of NCLB. We regard this program to be an important achievement because the grant enabled us to create a sustainable infrastructure through investments of the university and the partner school district.
Much like the establishment of a speaker series within the Student Teaching Seminar that emerged from the work done in creating the New Teacher Academy, the SES tutoring program became a sustainable program for the university and even a revenue-generator. Also, the program will continue to be offered to the partner district in future years as it will under the purview of the university partner, Communities in School beginning in the 2011-12 academic year. Furthermore, the success of the City-Wide After School program (a project not directly supported by the grant but related to its goals in serving students in high-need environments) coupled with the emergence of the SES program, which provides our teacher candidates with active teaching experiences in high-need settings, has stimulated discussion among arts and science and teacher education faculty about these teaching opportunities earning field experience credit for candidate certification. Consequently, these programs may find a home in our permanent curriculum, thus fulfilling the goal of exposing all our future teachers to high-need school environments and impacting our campus in a lasting way.
The fifth year of the project has resulted in one final initiative that has the prospect of bearing similarly lasting fruit. As an offshoot of the SES tutoring program, the project team sought to focus grant dollars on gifted students in high-need schools in order to expose our candidates to the challenges and opportunities of gifted education in high-need schools. Programming that we targeted toward gifted students included attendance at the Illinois Associated for Gifted Children conference; a professional development session on gifted education provided by an AU faculty member with expertise in the field; observing a classroom at the Illinois Math and Science Academy, followed by discussion of giftedness in math and science; and a workshop on gifted education conducted by directors of the Gifted Academy for 4th and 5th graders in D131. Evaluation of this programming will seek to answer questions about the effectiveness of preparation of candidates to teach students who excel beyond measured achievement standards, in comparison to the preparation for teaching students who struggle to meet those standards.
Project Outcomes
Our university is different today because of our partnership with the ACI Center for Success in High-Need Schools. First are changes within the faculty and within relationships between faculty members and faculty structures. Members of the original steering committee have emerged as faculty leaders within our institution, in no small part due to their work on this grant. One member became Honors Program Director after beginning work on this grant. A second has become University Assessment director and a third has been named assistant dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and is the director of the Illinois Math and Science Partnership grants awarded to Aurora University by ISBE. When AU sought the IMSP grants from ISBE, we proposed the model of collaboration between colleges and among partner districts that we learned through our ACI project collaborations. As a result AU received four teacher leadership grants in math and science to develop master’s degree programs at both the elementary and secondary levels, programs now entering their third year which have engaged university faculty across disciplines and colleges and which have attracted educators from high-need school districts within a fifty-mile radius of our campus.
But beyond these individual faculty members emerging as university leaders, the project’s impact has been most positively felt in “cultural” ways on our campus through the collaborative structures it has established. Beyond anecdotes of improved communication and understanding among arts and science and teacher education faculty members are the lasting changes in our governance structure that this project helped enact. The Council for Certification of School Professionals is the official governance body for all matters pertaining to programs that offer certifications to practitioners in schools. The Institute for Collaboration, the university entity that oversees this project, now provides regular reports on programming and curriculum to this body, which reports directly to the Faculty Senate, that are forwarded to the university provost, president, and board of trustees.
The curriculum has changed in some substantive ways, though many proposed changes have not yet found their way into the curriculum. Still, however, substantial changes have occurred within the secondary education programs which we chose to be our primary area of focus for much of the project. Our soliciting the input of practitioners in English language arts led to the successful proposal, passed through governance, to add coursework in multi-cultural young adult literature into our teacher preparation program. Math faculty, in response to feedback from area practitioners that geometry in their curriculum existed as an “island” in an otherwise algebraic approach to math, infused their syllabi with a greater emphasis on geometric concepts. The social studies program adopted a new course in human geography to fill key gaps in meeting NCATE standards, an action hiring practitioners also recommended in order to strengthen the background of candidates. Making these changes has made content area faculty increasingly sensitive to adaptation of content to needs of students preparing to teach in these environments. The project has made us aware that perhaps 50% of students in AU upper division content courses are seeking certification. Consequently, we have sought to enable candidates can practice teaching and presentation skills in these courses.
The impact on our teacher candidates is difficult to measure conclusively, but two sources of evidence seem indicative. First, a focus group conducted with students who served in the SES program during the 2007-08 academic year revealed general program satisfaction but also awareness that their conventional teacher training curriculum inadequately prepared them regarding classroom management and instruction of ELL students. This finding led to conversations between arts and science and teacher education faculty about developing a course specifically focused on the classroom environment—which our undergraduate curriculum at the elementary and secondary levels currently lacks—a course which currently exists for candidates returning to our post-baccalaureate program to obtain certification.
Second, assessment data from project year four among our SES students suggests changes in their attitudes toward high-need school environments and their willingness to work in them. One student reported her increased commitment to teach in such an environment and being inspired to serve as a role model for others. Other students acknowledged that they would consider teaching in such a school if the job opportunity became available. One student, however, found the experience challenging enough that she believed she would not accept a position in an environment such as the one where she had tutored. Her reaction speaks to the value of providing candidates with this exposure, perhaps as an example of a future educator whom a high-need school district would have difficulty retaining. Our candidates have been changed in positive ways through the grant because of the enhanced opportunities they have experienced to apply theoretical ideas about pedagogy in active teaching environments. They have seen firsthand the added challenges that school districts serving low-income populations face, while observing the determination of families in these environments to take advantage of educational programs that the grant has supported to give their children additional opportunities for success. Teacher candidates who have participated in programs such as our SES tutoring program or the New Teacher Academy have also gained an understanding of the importance of professional development as their careers unfold, thus enhancing their professional marketability due to their experiences beyond the conventional AU curriculum.
Current Challenges and Future Plans
Perhaps not surprisingly, our greatest challenge is the sustainability of initiatives our project has implemented with ACI Center grant support. AU has positioned itself through the project as an institution that can develop transformative teacher education programming for its candidates, providing them with opportunities to engage with students in our high-need partner districts in ways not typically found in university classrooms or conventional field experiences. Programs such as our SES tutoring experience or our speaker series now residing in the student teaching seminar have proven of such value that the university now commits its own dollars to their support. In addition to making lasting changes in the t of future teachers, we benefit from the strengthened bonds formed with our partner districts which will enable us to continue collaboration to achieve the shared goal of educating all members of our community effectively.
The grant has resulted in lasting changes in culture and curriculum at our institution. What gives us confidence that our project has met the challenge of sustainability are the ways that elements of our university community have welcomed the new ideas the project has generated. For instance, our NCATE accreditation process identified the vulnerability in our teacher training programs of insufficiently exposing our candidates to diverse populations in their field experiences. A sub-committee of our governing body overseeing certification programs has recommended that we explore the SES tutoring program, as well as the MyTime after school program, as formal field experiences within our curriculum to address this vulnerability.
Further, our master’s program in mathematics designed for middle school teachers resulted from conversations during early stages of the project, and it now comprises a lasting part of our graduate curriculum. Finally, our focus on gifted education in high-need schools during the final year of the project may become a permanent part of our curriculum. Our plans for continued assessment and improvement of our teacher training programs will follow the model that we learned through this project: to search for sources of support to promote innovation and the infusion of new ideas into our established ways of doing business, to demonstrate the positive impact that these innovations can have on our candidates and their future students, and to find the means to sustain the momentum of these programs and to find a curricular home for them.
References
Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy. (2007). Rising above the gathering
Storm. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
New Teacher Center. (2008).Making the case: Investing in high-quality induction programs
for new educators. Santa Cruz, CA; University of California at Santa Cruz.
Thompson, M.,Paek, P., Goe, L., & Ponte, E. (2005. ) The impact of new teacher induction of
teacher practice and student learning. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service.
